


Reveries of Days Gone By

by hopeless_eccentric



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e17-18 Juno Steel and the Time Gone By, F/F, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, Kissing, Knife fights, Reunions, i love that trope sm gird your loins, that trope where you like. cant bring yourself to kill your partner, the reunion just happens a bit different dont worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28887456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: In thirty seconds, Vespa could take the suitcase and wash the blood off her hands and be done with the Board of Fresh Starts for the rest of her life, however short and miserable the ache of Martian radiation made it. She might not have an answer to the question of where the hell to go after all of this was over, but once she buried her knife in the woman’s chest and got her hands on that briefcase, she could at least have the luxury of trying to find one.Unfortunately for her, the woman on the other end of the briefcase had a weapon Vespa hadn’t accounted for. She just happened to wear the exact same face as Buddy Aurinko.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay
Comments: 19
Kudos: 28





	Reveries of Days Gone By

**Author's Note:**

> oh man oh man oh man i finally got an excuse to fight the combat against your partner and not being able to hurt them at the end of it trope so YEAH BABY
> 
> Content warnings for discussion of unreality (none is depicted in the fic, though Vespa spends a while convinced Buddy isn't real, similar to the episode), violence, injury mention, minor self-hatred

Vespa Ilkay had weathered enough knife fights in her life to know the woman with the briefcase didn’t stand a chance. She could already map her way through her jabs and parries and dodges in her head, pounding as it might be with adrenaline. Even dancing around glasses atop a bar and blocking out distant shouts and scrambling feet as the patrons were hurried out of any and all doors of the lighthouse, the fight should have been over in under thirty seconds.

In thirty seconds, Vespa could take the suitcase and wash the blood off her hands and be done with the Board of Fresh Starts for the rest of her life, however short and miserable the ache of Martian radiation made it. She might not have an answer to the question of where the hell to go after all of this was over, but once she buried her knife in the woman’s chest and got her hands on that briefcase, she could at least have the luxury of trying to find one.

Unfortunately for her, the woman on the other end of the briefcase had a weapon Vespa hadn’t accounted for. She just happened to wear the exact same face as Buddy Aurinko.

“Just give up already,” she heard herself hiss as another blow went a little too wide, pathetic instinct guiding her wrist in lieu of duty.

“My sincerest apologies, but I’m afraid—” Buddy, or rather, the woman who had morphed into her likeness, broke off to grunt as she blocked Vespa’s knife with the suitcase and pushed, sending her stumbling backwards. “I have no intention of doing so.”

“Tough luck,” Vespa huffed.

“I don’t often give away my new purchases to my accosters,” Buddy replied with the kind of growl Vespa wished she could have forgotten, just because it was so specifically Buddy that it almost gave the radiation-borne visage a little credibility.

“Yeah, I kinda guessed that was why you were fighting me over it,” Vespa returned, spitting the words out as she met a blow with the suitcase with the heel of one of her boots and kicked.

“Do you want the clothes off my back too, darling?” Buddy breathed. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t take anything you want, in that case.”

“Shut the hell up,” Vespa spat, for telling the woman not to call her darling was far more likely to reveal a waver in her voice.

“Once again, I have no intentions of doing as you ask,” Buddy returned, lofty and confident and everything Vespa wished she could scrub from her mind altogether just so she would never have to see it parodied ever again. “And I am truly sorry if you were under any other impression.”

Perhaps it was spite that made Vespa bring her blade down faster, her wrist lashing and snapping like a venom-happy snake while her opponent swung and dodged and tried to meet her every blow. Perhaps it was desperation. Vespa wasn’t sure, and she definitely wasn’t going to start any introspection while the bartender’s attack dog picked his guts off the floor and tried to get a hand around his blaster.

If not for years of knife fights under her belt, the slide of broken glass under her boot would have sent her toppling onto the bar. She managed to recover well enough, even almost landing a strike in the process. That didn’t stop a frustrated growl from blooming past her throat anyway.

For just a moment, the woman wearing her long lost lover’s face paused, as if there had been something familiar in the sound.

Vespa knew wishful thinking when she saw it, so she twisted her arm and dove for another strike. 

The vision before her was woven into a near-perfect approximation of Buddy Aurinko because Vespa had clung to every thread she could. She didn’t doubt her subconscious had filled in the holes of time and circumstance just to weave those strings a little closer together, either. Buddy might just be the easiest subject to fabricate because she was one of the subjects Vespa had spent the most time ensuring she knew beyond sensible detail.

She had dedicated years to every smile line and mole and angle of her. The brow now drawn into a focused, sweat-slick glare had been memorized under loving lips and prayerful hands a million years ago, when Vespa had worshipped at her lover carelessly, as if she would have a chance to do so every day for the rest of her life. 

She had memorized her mannerisms and idiosyncrasies and appearance out of convenience, because it seemed like a pleasant way to love someone at the time. She had retained the memory out of necessity. It had just been her dumb luck that the effort had been repaid like this, with a perfect cast of Buddy Aurinko’s face imposed upon her adversary.

The vision had its faults, of course. Buddy was too good of a shot to ever leave one eye covered for that long, especially when she had someone to fight. Her usual memories of Buddy were usually younger and a little less coarse, more marble statues in dedication to a woman lost than an attempt to drag her living form into a present that would not hold it.

Vespa pushed the thought aside. She could consider her regrets once she had the suitcase in her hand.

She lunged again. The woman parried. Something cold squirmed in her chest.

Vespa tried to quell that rebellious patch of foggy gray obscuring her focus and tugging at her sleeve, but it would not depart, for fear flared in Buddy Aurinko’s perfectly rendered eye when she struck again, dislodging the suitcase and leaving her weaponless.

“Big Guy, Buddy’s going down!” Someone out of sight croaked, though not loud enough for Vespa to consider his voice for a second. If he was truly an accomplice of the wide-eyed woman gradually backing her way into the wall, he should have known the name of anyone else working with them. ‘Big Guy’ wasn’t exactly the most convincing alias her mind could conjure.

“I can handle myself just fine, Juno!” Buddy called back. Vespa couldn’t help the lurching of her chest at a tone that was just as bold and defiant and somehow, almost affectionate, as she remembered.

Before Vespa could do more than turn her head, Buddy lunged for the knife.

Vespa wasn’t sure if she twisted too hard or struck back at the wrong angle or if Buddy’s ankle had twisted around the back of her knee before or after the single second it took for everything to go wrong, but somehow, she had managed to crumple atop the bar and bring her opponent down with her. She started scrambling for the knife the second she shocked herself into moving, heart pounding and mind racing with the possibilities of the woman getting there first, or worse, one of her accomplices firing before either of them got the chance.

By the time her hand closed around the blade’s familiar grip, the woman had stopped moving altogether.

If not for the clear racing of her heart against Vespa’s own breast, she would have thought her dead. Her face had gone ashen and her eye had gone wide. She seemed so frozen and slack that even her lungs had forgotten to move.

“Vespa,” she breathed, worshipping the name with silk-soft lips Vespa, for once, wished she had forgotten altogether.

“You’re not real,” Vespa returned through gritted teeth.

A better assassin wouldn’t have let her hand freeze around the grip of the knife. A better assassin wouldn’t have let her hood fall and give the woman a chance to play with that weak soft thing in the middle of her chest she spent half her days patching up and the other half trying to forget about. A better assassin wouldn’t still be here, waiting for her blade to leap from her hands and kill Buddy Aurinko of its own accord.

“Vespa, I’m so sorry, I—”

“Shut up!” Vespa cut her off.

A better assassin wouldn’t be shaking her head like some kind of child trying to throw off a bad dream. A better assassin wouldn’t have a hand gripped in her hair as if she could tear the vision out by the roots. A better—

“Vespa, please,” Buddy started again, so soft and sweet that Vespa could almost justify the way her image swam. “Darling, look at me.”

“You’re not real,” Vespa repeated, then repeated again, as if murmuring the words a thousand times could somehow conjure the fragile belief into reality. “You can’t be real.”

“Darling,” Buddy murmured again.

Vespa wrapped another hand around the grip of the knife, as if that would stop either of them from shaking like a leaf. Somehow, Buddy kept her gaze and her words clear as the ringing of a bell. That ringing left Vespa vibrating with its aftershocks, unable to think or breathe or even make that traitorous organ in her chest pound correctly.

All she needed to do was push the blade down a few inches, and all of it would be over. The woman would go back to looking like any other corpse. Vespa could wash her hands of the day, get her last payout, and walk free. All she needed to do was finish the damn job.

“Dammit,” she hissed, as if chewing out her hands would make them work.

“Vespa, I’m not a hallucination,” Buddy insisted, and for the first time, a ghost of the waver in Vespa’s hands materialized in her voice. “I’ve been at the lighthouse—”

“It’s been years, Bud!” Vespa broke her off. “I spent every goddamn day waiting, and you weren’t there. You weren’t—dammit, focus, V—”

“Vespa, please,” Buddy pressed again. “I need you to believe me, darling. I need you to believe I’d come back for you.”

“Bud,” she started again, trying and failing to ease her voice. “What the hell am I doing? I know you’re not, I just--”

Vespa broke off to shake her head, as if that could do a thing to clear it. Buddy’s image stayed as solid as ever.

“Bud, can you close your eyes for me?”

“Darling—”

“Don’t call me that, Bud,” Vespa swallowed. “I can’t do this if you keep calling me that.”

“Then don’t,” Buddy tried to protest. “If you can’t kill me now, I don’t see why closing my eyes should help.”

“Dammit, just—” 

Vespa wasn’t sure where the words went. They died somewhere between the stiff, dry air of the bar and the chest of the woman she was supposed to have killed. She knew it was pathetic to try and take an inch of solace here, but the sentimentalist in her that had tortured her into thinking she would ever see Buddy Aurinko again didn’t particularly care.

The hands on the grip of the knife only stopped shaking when a gentle set of fingers came to rest upon them, steadying and guiding the blade back onto the bar at her side. Vespa didn’t have it in her to raise her head, knowing better than to bare a face that hadn’t been tear-streaked in years to the world.

“Vespa,” Buddy started again, the two syllables a quiet, candlelit prayer held between their chests, just for the two of them to cherish. “Can a hallucination do this, darling?”

Vespa only raised her head at the feeling of a hand nudging her cheek, trying to find an angle at which to hold her face and get a good look at her all at once. She decided it was best to allow it, and as if it would make the touch any more definite, Vespa closed over Buddy Aurinko’s hand with one of her own.

“Buddy,” she heard herself breathe, a thousand miles away. “It’s really you.”

“In the flesh,” Buddy confirmed.

“Oh, Bud, I’m so—”

Buddy’s thumb slid over to her lips before they could open on an apology.

“I’ve spent far too many years without you to hear you wasting your words on apologies, darling,” Buddy smiled. 

Vespa had remembered the expression within an inch of reality, though it seemed she hadn’t quite catalogued the way that smile made her head spin and her chest go fuzzy like they were falling for each other over a few drinks and a mugging all over again. She was only pulled out of her own thoughts when Buddy’s smile faltered.

“Besides, if anyone should be apologizing, it should be me,” Buddy sighed. “I thought you were gone, darling.”

“You had every reason to, Bud,” Vespa returned, wincing when something wet dripped off her own cheek and landed just under Buddy’s eye. “Sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Buddy chuckled, as soft and sweet as wedding bells. “In fact, if crying on my cheeks is going to encourage you to continue stroking my face, I fully endorse your endeavor.”

“God, I missed you so much,” Vespa might have laughed.

At some point, it seemed Buddy had wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She took the moment to pull them closer together, though by Vespa’s count, the few inches left between them were too great in number for their own good. Such gaps were better closed, in her opinion. Buddy must have agreed, for she was surging up to kiss Vespa in return before she could even finish her inhale.

It took all of two seconds for Vespa to realize she had forgotten how to kiss Buddy Aurinko like she used to. There was a hint of muscle memory somewhere in the back of her mind, but it was frail and stiff and felt like someone else’s kinder lifetime superimposed over her lips. 

Vespa was stiff for a moment before Buddy’s hand crept up into her hair and pulled her closer, as if to say she had all the time in the world to figure out how to love her again and that any second spent learning was a second spent well. It was a touch that told her not to be sorry, even if she was trying to kiss her apologies into Buddy’s lips.

Buddy was soft and gentle and forgiving. Vespa had almost forgotten what such things felt like.

“I missed you too, darling,” Buddy beamed when they broke, still holding Vespa so she couldn’t tarry more than an inch away. Vespa was pretty sure there was nowhere she would rather be.

Buddy’s hand was still on Vespa’s face when her smile began to fade, dragging the heady warmth from the room with it.

“Of course, a kiss doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to, darling,” she started, all too quickly. Something in Buddy’s voice cracked, so out of sympathy, something in Vespa’s chest did the same. “I know I haven’t seen you in quite some time, and we might just be trying this, and—”

“Oh, save it, Bud,” Vespa felt herself smiling at the nervous mannerisms she had only seen once before, when after a different knife fight, a million years ago, Buddy laughed away her nerves like a starlet shrugging off an opulent fur and asked if they might work better as a pair.

Buddy didn’t seem to have any response, so she kissed Vespa again. Vespa certainly wasn’t complaining.

The starmap underneath Vespa’s hands had changed in the years since Buddy Aurinko had known her worship. Some lines were deeper, and the scar of radiation burns brushed at Vespa’s forehead when she pressed their heads together, as if skin to skin contact could somehow put fifteen years of longing into words.

Vespa didn’t particularly care if Buddy looked different or didn’t kiss the same way she once had. She wore time well, in Vespa’s opinion, and not only because age itself had its work cut out for it when it came to Buddy Aurinko, starlight cast in the shape of a woman.

Perhaps she had stopped seeing shades of Buddy in the corners of her eyes, but every time they appeared, they did not wear the chains of time. The woman before her, however, was worn and scarred, with slightly different mannerisms and patterns of speech. 

Whenever Vespa had been cruel enough to imagine a reunion, she imagined that change would gouge a thousand miles between them that Vespa would never have a chance of crossing. If Buddy recognized her at all, she would know better than to waste her time.

However, when she looked at every inch of Buddy Aurinko that was new or changed or a detail dented from memory squeezing it too tight for fear of letting it go, the inches between them only felt like inches. She wore change not as a sign of growing further away, but as a sign of life. When Vespa’s eyes scanned over her, all she could feel was fondness for that fact.

When she glanced back up at Buddy’s eye, she knew all Buddy could feel was fondness too.

Maybe the only thing they shared with Buddy and Vespa, Vespa and Buddy, were outlines. Maybe they were just two women who hardly knew each other again. Maybe there was still a company that wanted that briefcase and didn’t care if Vespa killed Buddy Aurinko in the process of retrieving it.

Vespa could worry about those things in time. When she looked down at the woman before her, all she could see was Buddy Aurinko, here in the flesh, who had loved her once and loved her still.

For all Vespa cared, the rest of Mars could wait its turn for her attention.

**Author's Note:**

> MAN i love women
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below stay awesome gamers
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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